Greenley
Parfums de Marly (2020)

Alright!

So let me start by adding credibility to my nose:

I love citrus in the summer (doesn't everyone). I also like well done aquatics!

My top 10 summer scents: (not in order)
Beach Hut Man Amouage
Nautica voyage (cheap but good)
Bleu de Chanel (just good)
Renaissance Xerjoff
40 knots Xerjoff
MFK gentle fluidity silver
Erba Pura Xerjoff (I just like them)
Bleecker Street Bond 9
Hamptons bond 9
Costa Azzurra Tom Ford

For me, the scents above 1ast forever on my skin, project like beasts, my girl digs it, and the compliments come from all sides. There are a few barbershop scents I reach for just because they are easy to wear and smell good in a generic sort of way: vodka on rocks kilian, pdm Percival & sedley, nasamotto silver musk, the harmonist yin transformation& sacred water...

Now I mention all of these to say a few things: I think I have a good nose for summer scents, if you like these scents and can agree that these work well in summer and work well with your skin and or agree with my likes so far, you will feel incredibly comfortable when I say whoa to Greenley!

Almost a photorealitic green apple. Like mfk gentle fluidity silver and amouage beach hut man this departs from the typical citrus summer spring scents. It's crisp, bright and with some spice and wood to make it well rounded. My girl smelled it and she liked it.
It'll set you apart for sure. It makes someone want to come in for another hug for sure. Unisex of course.

Sillage is great.
Longevity is great.
Unique for sure.
Compliment puller no doubt.
Unisex slightly mask leaning in the base.
Summer and spring definitely.
Priced decently at discounters.
Do I recommend getting this? Yes. Duh.

Well done PDM.
Well done.

I'm not usually a fan of PDM, but I have to give credit to this scent for being pretty decent. As Varanis Ridari points out, we could live without Greenly, but it's still a likable fragrance. While it doesn't necessarily evoke a green feeling, the combination of tart pomarose and woody amber creates a surprisingly good smell. While I wouldn't go out of my way to pay over $250 for this type of scent, as there are Hermes fragrances that give me a similar vibe, if you can overlook the price tag, it's a good scent.

Maybe it's the sinus infection skewing my perception, but this is exactly the same as JVAP without the neroli note. Check out my review on that for more details, but tl:dr JVAP has beautiful green herbal notes along with neroli orange - a beautiful note that women unceremoniously relate to baby diapers and baby wipes.

Okay, further into the drydown I think I know what happened here. Someone saw the success of apple in Y EDP but knew it was way too sweet, but also realized JVAP was a masterpiece of green herbs but the neroli had to go. They put their own apple into JVAP and added quite a bit of oakmoss in the drydown to make it more appealing for older guys and smell more expensive. If you like this, buy a clone. I prefer just wearing CDNIM EDP and sauvage EDT in spring and not playing the niche pricing game, so pass for me.

It's a happy, juicy, freshly-fruity-woody green scent (unisex, but leans more masculine especially in the top notes) with very showergelly/shampooey vibes. I think it's this shampooey apple scent that makes it feel so. I normally am not a fan of shampooey/showergelly perfumes but this is probably my favourite of the kind, it just smells very nice and refreshing, it's equal parts cooling/calming and energizing, just like a good shower. It dries down to a lovely and clean-feeling woods and cashmeran base that feels very comfortable and, to me, is the best part of the scent.

I'm glad I got a sample and I'll use it up on days when I want to smell fresh, nice, clean and not too feminine while not opting for straight citruses - but I cannot imagine recommending it to anyone except the most wealthy because the price for what you get is just not justifiable in my mind. It's a fresh and nicely made everyday scent, and in my peasant mind everyday scents should be at least somewhat affordable. But if price is not a concern to you and you want to smell NICE and CLEAN and freshly showered, this is it, it's beautifully made fruity-woody scent, it's strong and stays all day.

To me it's nicer than Versace Dylan Blue (both feminine and masculine) but it's probably the closest idea I can think of - except this is green and not blue.
Thumbs up because I like the scent - but if I considered the price, I should knock the rating down a bit. I mean, it's nice, but don't forget you can achieve this niceness for five times less.

A bright fruity offering from PDM, but not a "green" scent. Greenley should be quite popular but seems somewhat over-shadowed by some of it's PDM line mates. Greenley's got a lot of similarities to many other fragrances and leans in the direction of many masculine bath/shower products, but in an appealing way. There's a load of cashmeran in this, but I happen to like cashmeran's musky, woody tones and it fits quite well in support of the cedar and violet heart. Excellent performance like all PDM fragrances.

Hacivat
heylegros04/27/21 11:24

I love Parfums de Marly, but I'm not overly impressed with Greenley. Oddly enough, all my favourite scents from the house are listed as unisex (Carlisle, Percival and Layton), although I definitely think they're masculine. Greenley is definitely a unisex scent to my nose. It's not even slightly or a tad bit more masculine than it is feminine. No, it sits right on the fence.

The first few minutes are not particularly enjoyable to my nose. I find that it's a tart blast of pretty crisp apple note that has a sourness to it that is a bit off-putting. It could be the accords with the citrusy top notes, but there is definitely something conflicting in that opening. And it's definitely foreshadowing.

A couple of minutes in, it does get much better, with the musky base basically doing what it does so beautifully (and so much more successfully) in Percival: provide a toned up, powerful body to carry a bunch of notes and accords that evolve through the drydown. Once the woody notes really settle in, they do smoothen up the experience, and those oakmoss, cedar and petitgrain notes blend quite well all in all, although they're somehow pivotal, as they slowly turn the scent into something that has quite a different feel to it. It could be that the cashmere and amberwood notes feel somewhat out of place, as they bring some sort of warmth that just doesn't work all that well in a scent that so blatantly tries to feel fresh at first.

Again, without ruining it completely, they bring something conflicting to the experience. It's like a mid-July, sunny day freshie for the first minutes, then it turns into a scent that feels best worn in front of a Christmas tree.

I'll give Greenley due credit for not being linear. It reaches a point where it's enjoyable, but to me it never goes beyond that. It would be fair to say that the musk base note in Greenley does with green apple what the musk base note of Percival does with lavender. The main difference, to me, is that the other notes and accords are deeply elegant and sophisticated in Percival, whereas they feel a bit plain in Greenley, and too tart-scent oriented for my taste.

Greenley is no different than other PdM outings in that its longevity is really good, and it projects satisfyingly. However, it is definitely not one of their standout fragrances.